FM38 was well represented at the 2005 Dayton Hamfest (author included). The weather was great and everyone had a good time!

N9DII brought to my attention that according to an ARRL article posted June 10, Dayton Hamvention attendance was up by 542 over last year. The article cited a total attendance of 20,411 as compared to 19,869 in 2004. This is rather surprising given all the talk about the declining number of licensed amateur radio stations.

According to the eham article that referenced the ARRL posting, the all-time attendance record for a Dayton Hamvention was in 1993 with 33,669 attendees. This clearly shows that this hobby is not as popular as it once was, but does this slight increase in attendance for Dayton 2005 signal an upswing?

FCC Amateur Radio statistics available at http://ah0a.org/FCC suggest that things aren’t as bad as we’ve heard. While more attention needs to be paid to the recruitment, education and licensing of new young Hams, the charts provided here suggest that overall, the total number of licensed hams has remained relatively constant since 1997 and the raw numbers show that this hobby is growing in popularity again despite the downswing since the early 90’s.

Quite possibly this author has errored on the side of optimism, but given the state of our economy and possible decline to our standard of living over the past 15 years, I think Ham radio is doing quite well. Its up to us to keep the ball rolling though! ;-)